"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."
Hans Christian Andersen

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Deep Into Love

“Go deep into love, and forget everything else”. This is the sentence that came to my mind when I could not sleep the other night. I got up and wrote it down, and since then, have come back to it often. I like the power in this simple string of words.
The love I speak of is profound affection; something akin to what Paulo Coelho (born August 24, 1947) describes as, "the love that consumes." Here are examples: The soldier on a battlefield goes deeply into love; for home, country and his comrades . . . and then faces imminent peril and death. Many examples have been seen when a soldier sacrifices his comfort and safety to ensure that his comrades survive. Recently, in Libya where a civil war is raging, the ruler Muammar Gaddafi, ordered some of his air force pilots to bomb their fellow citizens. But Gaddafi miscalculated the love of his soldiers, for the three pilots felt, “deep love” for the Libyan people, and they chose to forget their insane commander and ditched their planes in mid flight, ejecting to parachute safely to land. Deep love is greater, more compelling than the superficial, and can produce more significant results. Artists also find that they are in the deep stream of love while they are in the creative flow. Imagine Michelangelo, high above the floor of the Sistine Chapel, working painfully on his back on scaffolding for what must have seemed endless hours, day after day, accomplishing his masterpiece. He suffered from heat and cold, thirst and hunger, as well as body cramps and soreness that would make a normal person cry. At night he arrived home, bone tired, eyes blurry, and slept with his shoes and clothes on, only to get up the next morning to arrive back at work. His being in the flow of deep love consumed everything else, and after he finished his masterpiece it became one of the most revered artworks on earth—a place of pilgrimage by millions over the centuries.

If we do not live in deep love, we will feel something lacking and try and fill the hole. It might be drugs or alcohol, sex, money, or the pursuit of security in another form. In the end, only deep love will satisfy the core craving in a human soul. It is best to let the fire of love consume and purify everything else.

"In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love." Baha'u'llah (12 November 1817 – 29 May 1892)